You think more in terms of philosophy, not biology.
But i do agree with one thing: intelligence did evolve to help in survival. Whether or not you can state that a bacterium wants to live is really relative to how you define "want". From a biological point of view it is incorect, but from a phlilosophical point of view it is absolutely valid.
OUT

"As a biologist, I firmly believe that when you're dead, you're dead. Except for what you live behind in history. That's the only afterlife" - J. Craig Venter

Why is reproduction ever important? I am tempted to think, again, supporting the view of survival that there is some link. But I can't articulate it precisely...

Why is there this urge for a specie to mutiply and duplicate its genes? I had also thought of ideas related to food chain before. The food chain according to me, is a representation, of how animals interact in an ecosystem as far as consumption is concerned. An imbalance to this food chain, I assumed, was allowing one specie to reproduce freely. This slowly affects all the other species in the food chain; it can finally result in extinction/decrease in population of the other species to be general. This finally affects the specie under consideration. If you let this specie to reproduce freely, then definitely it is going to face extinction one day, right?

Not defiantly. I remember seeing something about wolves eating Elk and their young after being brought back into a certain area. The Elk population is going down very fast and the wolf population is rising and they are basically protected from almost anything... but when the Elk move because it is too dangerous or if they all die then the wolf population will become very small, which in turn give the Elk time to repopulate and with only a small number of wolves to hunt the elk, the elk population will get very large which will equal more food for wolves so the wolf population grows again. I see it as more of a cycle than it leads to extinction but I'm sure it has in other cases.

Man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. - Henry Benson

I think perhaps we are all looking at this wrong. Doesn't this all seem really pointless why would animals reproduce and struggle to survive if all they would do is die?
Why would humans have such wonderful loving relationships if we were no better than the black widow who eats her husband?
I don't know if you have ever taken a physics class but the 3rd law of physics is that everything increases in disorder. Since Biology and Physics work together it seems clear that life could not have truly been an accident. But then we come back to the age old question of what is the purpose of llife?
Have you ever truly been in love? You will know that it is not just a trick of your imagination. Have you ever protected your child from danger? You will know it was not an instinct. Explain that to me.

In my opinion there is a purpose to life, there is a reason we are all here, there is a reason that we love and have zest for life. I believe we are seperate from the animals, they are driven by mere instinct not by family ties or love, the male black widow mates and is eaten, if that happened in the human world that would be simply ridiculous (not to mention sick) The male elephant mates and then leaves with no regard for his child, in the human world that is the cause of much heartache and grief. Humans care about each other, we care about the world around us, we study it, we protect it we do more than any species on the planet. The gazelle does not care if there is not enough Ozone, the parakeet did not build rockets to the moon. The Amazon tree frog could care less about if other tree frogs are homeless. I think animals act on instinct, but humans are above that.
Animals are here to provide us with food in my opinion, if they did not reproduce they would not be here any more to give us food. If they could not adapt to their enviroment they would not be here to give us food. And if they did not have instinct they would not be here to provide us with food. Therefore things evolve, things change, but if they aren't helping us out they are not doing their job.

Mother birds, bears, lions, some crocodiles protect their young from danger. Instincts. Plus I can find animal lovers and vegetarians who will disagree with your second point.

<Philosophy mode>
Even with all our squabbling, wars and pointless activities, our survival does contribute a(small) part to the overall benefit of humanity, and that makes living worthwhile.
</philosophy mode>

Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; ~Niebuhr

All the philosophical and physiological reasoning that has been used to elucidate Evolution can be distilled to one simple fact: All living organsims exist to Reproduce themselves. Anything else is just for show. Self-reproduction IS Survival in the Biological World. Hence all the elaborate mechanisms of sexual reproduction that have evolved.

Behold God's handiwork--it is in the biological universe and in your Mind. Praise Him!

Sorry, for the long period of absence. Frankly I never expected this place to be this animated ever since I forgot about it.

First, I side with MrMistry: I mean he has one point. I see things philosophically rather than scientifically. And it is only in philosophy that I believe that the idea of survival makes any sense.

Spygirl wrote:In my opinion there is a purpose to life, there is a reason we are all here, there is a reason that we love and have zest for life.

Well, even I do believe that there is a purpose to life. And that was why I had thought about survival. And I don't know why but I still believe that survival is the only reason we are alive today.

Well, it high time I tell you people about a blog I created. It is titled figuring out life. I post about my thoughts regarding this subject. I have been quite about this place for a long time. I would like people to visit that place. PLease give me your feedbacks too. Remember you can comment there if you like...

One other thing I would want you to know is about the posts there: I may have posted more than one post in a single day. In that case, read the last post first and the first post last. Begin with the old posts.

Last edited by deostroll on Sun Mar 12, 2006 3:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In my opinion there is a purpose to life, there is a reason we are all here, there is a reason that we love and have zest for life. I believe we are seperate from the animals, they are driven by mere instinct not by family ties or love, the male black widow mates and is eaten, if that happened in the human world that would be simply ridiculous (not to mention sick) The male elephant mates and then leaves with no regard for his child, in the human world that is the cause of much heartache and grief. Humans care about each other, we care about the world around us, we study it, we protect it we do more than any species on the planet. The gazelle does not care if there is not enough Ozone, the parakeet did not build rockets to the moon. The Amazon tree frog could care less about if other tree frogs are homeless. I think animals act on instinct, but humans are above that. Animals are here to provide us with food in my opinion, if they did not reproduce they would not be here any more to give us food. If they could not adapt to their enviroment they would not be here to give us food. And if they did not have instinct they would not be here to provide us with food. Therefore things evolve, things change, but if they aren't helping us out they are not doing their job.

The purpose of life is to survive.The better we adapt to the surrounding the better we survive.The truth,justice does not always survive.We evolve to survive.It is only the survival that we need.The so called Love is nothing but a factor for survival.There is always a love between the people of the same race for the survival of the specific race.The love between the mother and child is strong in humans and not so in lower animals.Love does have a lot of positive features and has no philosophy.Love is present for the mother to teach and to protect its offspring indirectly preparing the offspring to survive in the world of competetion.There nothing called as true love it is all inborn and they may be expressed in different frequencies.As far as my mind goes true love is a mere sacrifice.The reason why we have to survive is because we donot want our race to die off.The rason why animals cannot achieve great heights like humans can is because they did not evolve to have a larger brain.I accept that animals are food but not only for us but also the other species.The aim of a producer is to survive and escape from the primary consumers.The objective of herbivores is to eat the producers
and to escape from the carnivores and so on.The reason why humans evolved a masterous brain is not clear upto date but there is a vague guess that the reason was to adapt for a climatic change in the rift valley.

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution"
-Theodosius Dobzhansky

David George wrote:The reason why humans evolved a masterous brain is not clear upto date but there is a vague guess that the reason was to adapt for a climatic change in the rift valley.

I suggest you watch Discovery or NGC. One day I got this crazy account stating that the present world sprung up from meagre population of 200 people some million years ago.

It also gave us a clear picture of why we humans adapted rather successfully. Well, it has to do a lot with consuming protein diets. After human beings discovered fire, they had to take less time to chew food (which otherwise usually took like 4 to 5 hrs to masticate). The human brains grew more larger in size because of this. And from there the story of evolution takes on...It was a good documentary.

Would you people agree if I said love is a small part of a bigger process called feminism?

Try to think about it. Males were originally known to be polygamous. (No offence, but its true). But today, you see fathers are happy managing one wife and few children.

The most logical reason for this phenomenon was that males were somehow interested in fathering the offspring to maturity. In other words, it was for no other reason other than to take care of their young ones!